COLUMBUS — The Ohio Wildlife Council has voted to remove the trumpeter swan from the state’s threatened species list following a 28-year effort by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) to restore the species’ population in Ohio.
Today, the trumpeter swan population is at nearly 900. There are swans nesting in 26 different counties across the state, according to ODNR.
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Trumpeter swan populations experienced severe declines throughout North America in the 1700s and 1800s due to unregulated harvest and wetland habitat loss. They were extirpated from Ohio as early as the 1700s.
The Division of Wildlife began a trumpeter swan reintroduction program in 1996 after aquatic habitat improvements and successful reintroductions in other Midwest states. This was done by collecting swan eggs from an established population at the Minto Flats State Game Refuge in central Alaska. The eggs were placed in incubators and flown to Ohio, where the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and The Wilds of the Columbus Zoo partnered to help care for the eggs, raise the young trumpeters, and release them in appropriate habitats, ODNR explained.
“Ohio’s professional wildlife biologists dedicated themselves to growing the trumpeter swan population over nearly three decades, and their perseverance has paid off,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. “In addition to monitoring the growth of the trumpeter swan population, a great deal of work also went into creating and restoring wetland habitat needed for generations of trumpeters to nest and thrive.”
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Wetland complexes in state wildlife areas provided the critical habitat Ohio’s trumpeters needed.
ODNR called the recovery of the trumpeter swan a “monumental conservation success story in Ohio.”
The Division of Wildlife’s monitoring and management efforts to increase trumpeter swan populations and their habitat are ongoing.
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